Flipkart to restart its grocery delivery service Supermart

After temporarily suspending all its services to customers on Wednesday morning, Flipkart is gearing up to restart its grocery delivery service Supermart within the next few hours, people familiar with the matter told ET.

The company will first kick off deliveries of food and other essentials in Bengaluru, followed by Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Delhi NCR, where Supermart has been operational for the past few months, the people cited earlier said requesting anonymity.

Flipkart did not respond to a detailed query from ET until the time of publishing this story.

The Walmart-owned online retailer is currently working with the Bengaluru Police, which has begun issuing passes to delivery agents of e-commerce companies, in order to avoid its delivery staff being stopped and harassed by the police on the street.

Read: Despite govt clearance, ecomm firms find it difficult to deliver essentials

That comes after cases of police brutality against e-commerce delivery agents were reported from several cities across India over the past few days, despite clear directives from state and central governments exempting e-commerce form Section 144 prohibitory orders.

Bengaluru City Police Commissioner Bhaskar Rao also tweeted that he had called for a meeting of all food, medicine, groceries, vegetables/fruits or animal products delivery aggregators on Wednesday and asked for company representatives to join.

Most e-commerce providers including Grofers, BigBasket, and Amazon are currently not accepting new orders from consumers, and are awaiting clarity from state and central governments in order to restart their services. Swiggy and Zomato are non-functional as well.